People in modern days always seem to be busy and running short in time, they start digging ways to experience more about life, to make life fuller with the least effort. And watching TV became the most covinient way, people can get the "unearned" experience from it. In "Crack and the Box", Pete Hamill argues that those "unearned experiences" from television do nothing good to the audience beacuse "they (unearned experiences) are attained as easily as popping a bill." And in order to be real, Hamill says that we need to explore the real world ourselves. "Earned" experience is an active process because it requires the process of actually going through the incident, while "unearned" experiences appear to be passive and unreal. I agree that unearned experience influence teenagers, but they are somewhat bringing good impact. .
Although the experiences are "unearned", people can still be benefitted as they "go through" those stories that don't belong to them. While expericing the "unearned", teenagers should be able to absorb as much knowledge as they do in real life, thus they can apply it throughout their own lives. It is true that "the television addict and the drug addict are alienated from the hard and scary world, they also feel they make no difference in its complicated events." However, unreal experience can be compliment and an advantage. Such experience provides the shortest way for teenagers to learn knowledge from others, and apply this knowledge to their own lives. For instance, in the society of high teenage pregnancy rate and crime rate, goverments are trying the hardest to spread the message to everyone. And the unearned experiments appear to be the best way for young people to learn. Those personal stories don't belong to everyone, nevertheless, most teenages feel that they have gone through the tragedy in person by having the unearned experience from media and thus remind them to be alter of how hard life can be from making the wrong decision.
